Best Friends, Secret Lovers

by Jessica Lemmon

  Luke groaned.

  “Sorry. But you see my point, right? I can’t top that off with an I-love-you. I’ve made up my mind to go back to being friends with Flynn. Just friends. When I make up my mind about something, you know I do it.”

  “I know.” Luke walked over to her, bending his head to look down at her. Funny, she remembered when he was shorter than her. He’d been a pain in her butt then, and not one of her closest confidants. “Are you sure this is how you want to play it?”

  She wasn’t, but there was no other graceful way out of it. “I’m afraid if I wait too long Flynn will have to give me a speech explaining how temporary we were.”

  “Okay.” Luke sounded resigned as he went to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of beer. “Let’s make a plan for you to pull the trigger before he can.”

  Hope filled her chest. “Thank you, Luke!”

  Her excitement about making a plan mingled with pain in the region of her lovesick heart, but she ignored it.

  This was the best solution—the only solution. Soon enough she’d be on the other side, Flynn back where he belonged, her heart having accepted that he wasn’t theirs for keeps.

  The sooner she let him know they were through, the sooner she would heal.

  She hoped.

  Twenty

  It was like ripping off a Band-Aid. That was the comparison Luke made last night.

  He’d suggested she text Flynn, but there was no way Sabrina could break the news via a text. She and Flynn were too good of friends to have an important conversation via text message. Besides, she knew him. He would’ve shown up at her apartment and demanded she explain herself.

  She entered the executive conference room with her fresh cup of coffee to meet with Flynn, Reid and Gage. As much as she wanted to tell Flynn her decision sooner than later, now wasn’t the time for a private conversation.

  “Thanks for joining us,” Reid said with a smile.

  “I was stuck on a conference call the three of you insisted I make.” She narrowed her eyes at them in reprimand, but when her gaze hit Flynn’s, she rerouted. She couldn’t look him in the eyes with a whopper of an announcement sitting on the tip of her tongue.

  “Gage, you called this meeting. We’re here.” Flynn set aside his iPad, thereby giving Gage the floor.

  “Now that Mac and company have retracted their threats to leave Monarch and take their friends with them,” Gage started, “we need to massively increase sales. A huge boom in profits means bonuses all around, which makes Flynn look good, my sales department look good and Monarch look good. If we’re growing and Mac threatens to leave again, chances are he won’t have many followers. If any.”

  “I’m all for growth.” Flynn’s eyes narrowed. “I feel like there’s more.”

  “There is. I’m bringing in an expert. Someone who can aid me with coaching my team. I don’t love the idea of handing this to someone else, but I can’t handle my workload and training and expect to do both efficiently. I found a guy who comes highly recommended. I read about him in Forbes and then stumbled across his website. He’s incredibly selective about the jobs he takes, but several profitable Fortune 500 companies are on his client list.”

  “Who is this wizard?” Reid asked.

  “His name’s Andy Payne. He’s made of smoke, and somewhat of a legend. He’s also virtually unreachable. I couldn’t get him on the phone so I settled for a discussion with his secretary.”

  “Sounds mysterious,” Reid said. “If he’d be open to sharing that he’s working for us, we could use the media curiosity. Flynn?”

  To Sabrina’s surprise, Flynn turned to her. “You’ve been quiet.”

  “I’ve heard of Andy Payne. His website isn’t much more than a black screen with his name on it. If we share that we’re working with him across our social media channels, it might not even matter how much we improve sales. His involvement alone would be enough to gain stockholders’ support.” She looked at Gage. “It’s smart.”

  “Thanks.” Gage smiled.

  “Okay then.” Flynn nodded. “How much is this guy going to cost us?”

  * * *

  Sabrina shut down her laptop for the day and glanced at the clock. The digital read was 5:05, which meant the lower floors had already packed up to enjoy a rare day of sunshine.

  Flynn’s assistant, Yasmine, had already left, Gage and Reid were at their desks, and who knew how long they’d be here. They usually didn’t stick around as long as Flynn, but if she waited for them to leave she might be sitting here another hour-plus.

  She was tempted to chicken out and leave without talking to him at all until he looked up from his computer as if he’d felt her eyes on him. Once his mouth slid into a wolfish smile, she knew she didn’t have a choice.

  “Now or never,” she whispered to herself as she strode across the office. His door was open but she rapped on the door frame anyway.

  “Sabrina.” The way he said her name sent a warm thrill through her. One that harkened back to long kisses and their bodies pressed together as they explored and learned new things about each other. She had the willpower of a monk and the hardheadedness of a Douglas. She could do this.

  She had to.

  “Do you have a minute?” she asked, pleased when her voice came out steady. “I wanted to talk to you about something.”

  “Of course.” He didn’t look the slightest bit worried. Not even when she shut the door behind her and sat across from him in a chair on the opposite side of the desk.

  “It’s about the pact.”

  “The pact?”

  “Yes. The pact you reinstated with Gage and Reid about never getting married.”

  “I know what the pact is, Sab.” He didn’t look worried but he definitely looked unhappy. Maybe she was on the right track here. Maybe Flynn was worrying about the future as much as she was and didn’t want to ruin their friendship with more complications.

  “In college I thought the pact was a stupid excuse for your horndog behavior.”

  His mouth eased into a half smile.

  “When you met Veronica, you threw it out because you knew it was a stupid excuse. But I was unfair to call it stupid this time around, Flynn. You’re only trying to protect yourself. And I respect that.”

  “Okay...” He was frowning again, probably waiting for her to arrive at a point.

  “Even though I’ve never been in love before—” a tiny lie “—I expect to fall someday. I envision walking down the aisle in a big, white dress. I may not want it now, but I will.”

  He shifted in his seat, nervous like she was going to propose to him then and there. She wasn’t, of course, but last night she’d intentionally tried to imagine a groom at the end of the aisle waiting for her, and guess who she pictured?

  Flynn.

  “I’m getting married someday, Flynn. And you’re not.”

  She let the comment hang, watching his face as he understood that she wasn’t asking him for more, but less.

  “While being with you in a new way has been fun, it’s time to move on. We arrived in good places—you’re back to yourself and I’m painting again...” Kind of. She didn’t feel much like painting now. “I don’t know if you want a pair of chickadees over your mantel, but the painting’s yours if you want it.”

  She didn’t want it. She related too much to the female who had been foolish enough to fall in love with an emotionally unavailable bachelor.

  Flynn’s brow dented in anger, but still he said nothing.

  “So. That’s it, I guess. We just go back to the way things were before...you know. We’ll pretend this never happened.” She stood in an attempt at a quick getaway.

  “Where the hell are you going?” Flynn stood and pointed at her recently vacated chair. “Sit down.”

  She propped her hands on her hips in protest. “I wi
ll not. That’s all I had to say.”

  “Well, I haven’t said a damn thing.”

  “There’s nothing for you to say!”

  “Oh, trust me. There’s plenty to say.” He flattened his hands on the desk and gave her a dark glare.

  She folded her arms over her chest to prevent her heart from lurching toward him.

  “Are you breaking up with me?” he asked.

  “Are we...dating?” Her voice shook.

  “You bet your beautiful ass we’re dating. What would you call what we’ve been doing for the last two or three weeks?”

  “Having fun.” She gave him a sheepish shrug. “Having a fling.”

  “A fling.” He spat the words.

  “A really fun fling,” she concluded.

  “Listen to me very carefully.”

  She glared, attempting to match his ferocity, and leaned over his desk, her fingers pressing into it. “I’m listening.”

  “Good. I don’t want you to miss a single word.”

  Twenty-One

  Flynn’s thunderous mood only grew darker as the evening grew later. The moment last week in his office when Sabrina confronted him still banged in his head like a gong, vibrating from every limb and causing his fingertips to tingle.

  Granted, he hadn’t handled it well. He’d told her under no circumstances was she dumping him on his ass when they were just getting started.

  That hadn’t gone over well, and if he hadn’t been simultaneously pissed off and hurt by her suggestion to stop seeing him, he could’ve predicted as much. It seemed they’d both succeeded during their break from the office. Sabrina stopped his metamorphosis into his father and he’d convinced her to put herself first.

  She didn’t want him. Not anymore, anyway.

  He made himself respect her decision. Even when she left crying and told him she always cried when she was angry and not to read too much into it.

  After the explosion in his office, Reid and Gage barged in to offer their two cents, a.k.a., find out what the hell had happened.

  Flynn hadn’t told them everything, so they were probably still confused about why Sabrina left crying and never came back. They blamed him, and since he’d behaved like a horse’s ass, he didn’t blame them for blaming him. He’d digressed to pre-Valentine’s Day Flynn, and felt every inch the corporate piranha he used to be. He wore a dark suit, a darker outlook, and palpable anger wafted off him like strong cologne.

  How the hell else was he supposed to feel when Sabrina had come into his office, looking beautiful and sexy, and then broke up with him? He’d been yearning for her so badly, he could scarcely get her out of his head and she’d been ruminating on the best way to let him down easy.

  She’d called what they had a fling.

  What a load of crap.

  She’d emailed him the morning after their argument telling him she was taking a “leave of absence,” without an end date. He’d been sure she’d come to her senses in a day or two.

  Unfortunately, the week had passed as slowly as the ice caps melting, and her office remained empty and dark. There was a lack of sunshine in Seattle, and he blamed that on her, as well. Even when Seattle wasn’t sunny, which was almost always, Sabrina brought her own light with her.

  It wasn’t only that he missed her, or that he’d been forced to outsource some of their marketing for the time being, it was that she was...gone.

  Gone from the office, gone from his bed. Gone from his life. Her absence was like a shadow stretched over his soul.

  Waiting for her to come to her senses was taking a lot longer than he’d thought.

  He rubbed grainy eyes and shut his laptop, considering what to do next. At that moment Gage darkened his office door.

  “Did you call her yet or what?” Gage sat in the guest chair, looking tired from the long day. The workload that hadn’t been outsourced had fallen to Gage and Reid.

  “I have not.”

  “Reid and I tossed a coin to find out which one of us was going to come in here and ask the question we promised not to ask you.”

  Flynn pressed his lips together. Saying nothing was the safest response. As expected, Gage didn’t let him get away with it.

  “More than hanky-panky went on in your apartment, didn’t it?” He lifted one eyebrow and paired it with a smug smile. “You guys rushed in, expected a little slap and tickle, and ended up falling flat on your faces.”

  Before Flynn could decide how loud to yell, Reid stepped into the room.

  “What our fine cohort is trying to say is that you two kids accidentally fell in love with each other, and neither of you have admitted it.”

  Flynn blinked at his friend, unsure what to make of his assessment. It wasn’t as if Reid went around accusing people of falling in love. He’d sooner die than bring up the topic of love at all.

  “We’re not blind.” Gage tilted his head slightly and admitted, “Okay, we were blind for a while. But after that outburst between you and Sabrina in your office—”

  “And the fact that she left crying and hasn’t returned,” Reid interjected.

  “We caught on.”

  Reid sat in the chair next to Gage and they each pinned Flynn with questioning expressions. No, not questioning. Expectant. And what the hell was Flynn supposed to say?

  He’d been accused of falling in love with his best friend. The same best friend who’d come into his office on this day last week and told him she didn’t want anything to do with him. What would either of them say if they knew that the month he’d spent with Sabrina had been the best one of his life? What would his buddies say if they knew the truth—that he’d never experienced sex the way he’d experienced it with Sabrina?

  With her, sex was more than the physical act. She towed him in, heart and soul. Blood and bones. He’d been 100 percent present with her, and then she threw him away. Walked out!

  He’d told her if she really believed that what they had was a “fling,” she could march her ass out of his office for good. He knew damn well what they had wasn’t just sex or convenience. The dream he’d had about her was a prediction. Some part of his mind had known that she belonged in his arms and in his bed.

  He never counted on her cutting him off at the knees. He missed her. He wanted her back. And yet he cared for her too much to demand more than she was willing to give.

  “She told me she was getting married someday,” he told Gage and Reid. They both blanched at that confession. “That’s right, boys. She made sure to tell me she was getting married and since I made a pact never to be married, she didn’t want to lead me on.”

  “She wouldn’t ask you to give up the pact,” Reid said with a disbelieving laugh.

  “Wouldn’t she?” Flynn asked. He didn’t know the answer to that. “We only had a month together. What the hell am I supposed to say when she tells me she’s getting married someday and I have a pact not to so we may as well wrap up whatever fling we were having? She called it a fling, by the way. A fucking fling.”

  “Was it?” Gage asked, his face drawn.

  “Hell no it wasn’t a fling!” Flynn boomed. “And if she’s too hardheaded, or too dense or whatever other adjective you’d like to assign her, to realize that what we had was something special, then...then...”

  “She doesn’t deserve you?” Reid filled in with a smirk.

  “Shut up.” Flynn glowered.

  “You know, we can sit here all day and wait, or you can admit how you feel about her now.” Gage crossed one leg, resting his ankle on his knee. He propped his elbow on the arm of the chair and did a good job of appearing as if he could sit there all day.

  “Yep, and after you admit it to us—” Reid made a show of stretching and lacing his fingers behind his head “—then you can go tell her.”

  “Tell her what?” Flynn asked, his blood press
ure rising.

  “You tell us.” Gage lifted his eyebrows in challenge.

  “We can order in,” Reid said to Gage. “I haven’t had Indian in a while.”

  “Great idea. Amar’s has the best naan.”

  “Wrong. Gulzar’s is much better.”

  “Hey,” Flynn growled. “Remember me? What the hell do you two want me to say?” He stepped out from behind his desk to pace.

  Hands in his hair, he continued complaining, mostly about how he should fire both of them if this was the support he could expect from his other two best friends.

  “What am I supposed to do? Go to her and tell her I have no idea what we had, but it’s not worth throwing out?”

  “I think you’re going to have to do better than that,” Gage said and Reid nodded.

  “What, then? Tell her she was special and I didn’t want her to leave?”

  “Warmer,” Reid said.

  “You want me to tell her...” Flynn sighed, his anger and frustration melting away. Could he say it aloud? Could he tell his two boneheaded friends the truth that he’d been avoiding since the first time he’d made love to Sabrina? “Tell her I’m in love with her and that she belongs with me?”

  “By God, he said it.” Reid grinned.

  “Shit.” Flynn sat on the corner of his desk, the weight of that admission stifling. Too stifling to remain standing.

  “And then she’ll admit she loves you, too,” Gage said.

  “Weren’t you listening? She ended us in this very office.”

  “She’s scared of losing you,” Gage told him. “She cut things off before you could so that the two of you could remain friends.”

  “I wasn’t going to cut things off! And if that’s true, why isn’t she here, huh?” Flynn gestured to her empty office. “Wouldn’t my friend be here still?”

  “Not if you told her to bugger off,” Reid said.